The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition on Monday issued then pulled a story saying Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) may be stripped of the rights to its Internet Explorer Web browser as part of the remedy in the government antitrust case it lost earlier this month.

A spokesman for the paper, Dick Tofel, said the story, which appeared in the Journal's Internet edition at http://www.wsj.com sometime late Sunday night or early Monday morning eastern daylight time, was never meant to be published.

Asked if the report was removed because of issues with its accuracy, Tofel declined to comment. ``It wasn't that it was withdrawn, it shouldn't have been posted in the first place,'' Tofel told Reuters.

The story was ``up there for only a few hours,'' Tofel said, and never appeared in the Journal's printed editions. The Wall Street Journal and Wall Street Journal Interactive are published by Dow Jones & Co. (NYSE:DJ - news).

The story cited people close to the Microsoft case as saying the government is considering a proposal that would force Microsoft to grant royalty-free licenses to Internet Explorer, opening the programming code to customers and computer makers.

Restrictions on Microsoft's Office software products and its Windows 2000 server software are also being considered, the report said. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Justice Department would not comment on the story, except to repeat the Journal's position that the story was posted in error.

A spokesman for Microsoft was not immediately available to comment on the matter. Microsoft shares fell 3, or more than 3 percent, to 86-1/16 Monday on Nasdaq, where the stock was the second most actively traded issue.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has ruled that Microsoft broke U.S. antitrust law by illegally abusing its monopoly power over the operating system for personal computers. A hearing on remedies in the case is scheduled for May 24.

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U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's guilty verdict last week in the antitrust suit the government brought against the Redmond, Wash., company two years ago was expected, even by Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT). What wasn't, however, was the possibly more damaging toll the legal proceedings have taken on the company. According to many close to Microsoft, the company has been driven to major distraction by the trial, which has resulted in the delay of at least one of the company's major forthcoming product initiatives, Next Generation Windows Services.

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If the antitrust saga surrounding Microsoft were turned into a movie, it would be a B-flick called something like "Digital Trustbusters" or "Boies Don't Cry." In the Microsoft-Department of Justice drama, it's hard to say whether the government's victory means anything. The DOJ trumpeted its win after U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) as guilty of illegally maintaining its monopoly and of unlawfully tying its Internet browser to its Windows operating system (OS). Market watchers couldn't help but notice, however, that the company -- which immediately said it plans to appeal the ruling -- is free to go about its business while the courtroom drama continues.

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Today at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference 2000 (NAB2000), Microsoft Corp. unveiled Microsoft^® Windows Media™ screen-capture technology, the industry's first "true-to-the-source" screen-capture compression technology as a feature of the newly announced Windows Media Technologies 7. The new Windows Media screen-capture technology is the first to capture and stream computer motion without any loss in image quality or screen content. Developed through extensive customer input and intensive work by the research and development team at Microsoft's Digital Media Division, this new technology will offer a critical breakthrough for delivering streamed software demonstrations and training via the Internet or across corporate networks. Windows Media screen-capture technology is scheduled to be released in beta form as a component of Windows Media Technologies 7 in May 2000.

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Today at the National Association of Broadcasters Conference 2000 (NAB 2000), Microsoft Corp. unveiled Windows Media™ Technologies 7, the only Internet broadband-ready platform designed for creation, distribution and playback of broadcast-quality digital media. Microsoft^® Windows Media Technologies 7 will uniquely enable customers to realize the promise of Internet broadband with broadcast-quality video; CD-quality audio; end-to-end secure content distribution; unmatched reliability and scalability; and an open, easy-to-use and extensible platform.

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Julien has posted his review of BVRP's Winphone 2000. Here is a snippet from the review:

Hopefully, Winphone 2000 perfectly supports independent modems that can store your messages/faxes even if the computer is off! Winphone 2000 now supports ISDN modems due to its CAPI 2 support. However all the ISDN modems that use their own CAPI modified protocol won’t work correctly. Our test modem, (Bewan USBooster 128) uses a softly changed CAPI 2 protocol isn’t managed correctly by Winphone 2000. But BVRP & Bewan are working closer to fix this issue. Winphone 2000 also supports all related cellular phones that use the following protocols: GSM, DCS and CDMA.

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The Web Standards Project (WaSP) today denounced Internet Explorer 5.5 Windows Edition for abandoning Web standards Microsoft has publicly committed to supporting, and focusing on proprietary technologies which are certain to fragment the already-troubled Web space.

``We are incensed by Microsoft's arrogance, and perplexed by its schizophrenic decision to support standards on one platform while undercutting them on another,'' said Web Standards Project group leader Jeffrey Zeldman.

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Today at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) 2000 convention, Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) announced alliances with three additional television production system providers -- Grass Valley Group Inc., Vertigo Multimedia and Video Design Interactive -- to develop support for the Microsoft® TV platform. These leading providers enable production and transmission of interactive content and are incorporating interactive TV capabilities into their product lines. Today's announced collaboration will further enable the creation of mainstream interactive television by providing easy-to-use tools for the television industry. In addition, Microsoft and Norpak Corp. announced that they are working together to broaden support and implementation for interactive television.

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On March 29, 2000, VerticalNet, Inc. (Nasdaq: ``VERT'') and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: ``MSFT'') signed their definitive agreement announced earlier this year for a three-year strategic alliance to deliver business-to-business e-commerce services and content to small- and medium-sized businesses. As part of their strategic alliance, Microsoft will purchase at least 80,000 VerticalNet® Storefronts and E-Commerce Centers from VerticalNet and distribute them to third party businesses. VerticalNet will assist Microsoft in distributing 30,000 of these Storefronts and E-Commerce Centers. Additionally, VerticalNet will build the Storefronts and E-Commerce Centers, incorporating Microsoft megaservices like Microsoft® ClearLead®, and place them within its 55 communities of commerce. On April 7, 2000, VerticalNet and Microsoft completed Microsoft's equity investment in VerticalNet, in which Microsoft purchased 100,000 shares of VerticalNet's Series A 6.00% Convertible Redeemable Preferred Stock in exchange for $100 million in cash.

``We believe that this strategic alliance represents a tremendous competitive advantage for VerticalNet by extending our reach to thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses who are eager to participate in the power of e-commerce,'' said Mark Walsh, President and CEO of VerticalNet. ``The strategic alliance between our companies should further validate VerticalNet's portfolio model of communities of commerce.'' A Microsoft representative is expected to join the VerticalNet board of directors.

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Microsoft may be stripped of the rights to its Internet Explorer Web browser as part of the remedy in the government antitrust case it lost earlier this month, according to reports.

The Wall Street Journal, citing people close to the case, said the government is considering a proposal that would force Microsoft to grant royalty-free licenses to Internet Explorer, opening the programming code to customers and computer makers.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson has ruled that Microsoft broke U.S. antitrust law by illegally abusing its monopoly power over the operating system for personal computers. A hearing on remedies in the case is scheduled for May 24. Restrictions on Microsoft's Office software products and its Windows 2000 server software are also being considered, the report said.

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Microsoft today will show off new Windows Media technology in hopes of edging past competitor RealNetworks in the battle for Internet audio and video software dominance. Microsoft will unveil its technology at this week's National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas. The updates are tailored for training professionals; computer users with high-speed, or broadband, connections to the Internet; and content providers concerned about copyright protection.

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Windows Me puts Microsoft back into familiar territory: bundling different technologies into the operating system. Windows Me is Microsoft's next operating system for home users. The company demonstrated the latest features of the new operating system for the first time this past weekend, revealing tight integration with a number of Microsoft technologies, including Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player and links to MSN Internet sites.

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What's worse for a software company than being told it broke the law? Only this: Being told it makes an inferior product. Scarcely a day after Judge Jackson's ruling of law last week, AOL and Gateway unveiled a trio of low-cost Internet-access devices that pointedly excluded Microsoft from their party. The devices--a countertop, a desktop and a wireless Web appliance--use upstart Linux, rather than Microsoft's Windows, as their operating system. Linux, according to AOL and Gateway execs, beat Windows to the punch by being faster and more reliable. Ouch.

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According to Microsoft representatives in Tokyo, the Operating system will be remarkably small, and more surprisingly, the Windows Operating System will be housed on each game disc (DVD) that is released. While development on the X-Box operating system is ongoing, Microsoft representatives stated the final version will likely be under 500KB.

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We would like to welcome you all to the new and improved ActiveWin mailing list. We have finally sorted out all of the previous problems we had with delivering our list to you all (Our server wouldn't send any more than 200 mailings out). So now you can all look forward to daily e-mails keeping you up to date with everything that is happening in the world of Windows and Microsoft.

We have now begun to work on new content for the daily HTML mailing list you are receiving now...this will include FAQ's and tips of the day. In the mean time we would like to let you all know that you will get this mailing daily and whenever there is a big breaking news story we will also e-mail you all. We are still working out some problems with bits of text cropping up in our mailings, but we should have those sorted out very soon and as they tend to only appear at the bottom of e-mail mailing there isn't too much to worry about.

Subscribe to the HTML mailing list

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BetaNews learned this morning that Creative will not offer Windows 2000 support for the NOMAD 64 digital audio player. A user received an e-mail from the Creative Labs USA team stating that they had no intention of supporting Windows 2000, telling him "the system requirements of the product have always been Windows 95 or Windows 98." While they did say "there are no plans at this time...", users of the NOMAD may be able to persuade Creative with enough organized effort. Visit the NOMAD Web site for more information.

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Forgot your password for Microsoft Office 97/2000 document? Don't worry, this utility may help you to guess it. The following passwords can be recovered instantly: for Microsoft Access databases; all ones for documents created in French version of Microsoft Office; write-reservation passwords; passwords for workbook and individual sheets (Excel); document protection passwords (Word). The passwords required to open Word/Excel documents can recovered using "brute-force" and dictionary attacks, highly optimized for speed (the performance is 4-5 million passwords per minute on PII/PIII). Multi-language user interface is provided.

You can download the file from here.

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The White House might ask to be briefed by the Justice Department about the penalties it will seek against Microsoft Corp. for violating antitrust laws, a spokesman said Thursday.

"We have not been involved in this, but we have not ruled out being briefed on the case," White House spokesman Jake Siewert said last night. Siewert would not say what other White House involvement might be possible.

Presidential participation in antitrust decisions is extraordinarily rare but not unprecedented, according to antitrust scholars.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates met with President Clinton at the White House on Wednesday in a summit on the "new economy," two days after US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that the company broke federal and state antitrust laws by engaging in predatory tactics to protect monopoly in personal computer operating systems.

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Hooker Furniture Corp. knows that furniture can’t just have style; it’s also got to function.

That's also true for the company’s business operations. Hooker has to get its product to customers, keep costs low and stay competitive. That’s why the company replaced its mainframe-based IT system with a system based on Microsoft® BackOffice® Server 4.5. Since adopting the new system a year ago, the furniture manufacturer has used real-time communications and data transfer to improve efficiency, productivity and customer service while lowering administrative and overhead costs.

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Daily Radar have posted their last installment to their Starlancer week. Here is a snippet of it:

While Erin has been hard at work on StarLancer, his brother (and Digital Anvil's founder) Chris has been off working on his own super-mega space project. Since the first time we saw shots of Freelancer over a year ago, we've been pretty sure that this new game was going to shoot the entire space genre through the event horizon of a black hole. What we actually know about the game is fairly limited so far. In fact, we were just barely able to wrest these few screenshots away from the protective arms of Microsoft and Digital Anvil. The two companies have been jealously guarding the game, letting the merest of trickles out to satisfy our desire for more.

You can read more here.

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Software giant Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) is buying a 60 percent stake in Japan's No. 2 cable television operator, Titus Communications Corp., taking its push into high-speed Internet access to a small but growing market.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., said late on Friday that it was buying the stake in Titus from U.S. cable company MediaOne Group Inc. (NYSE:UMG - news), which is merging with U.S. telecommunications giant AT&T Corp. (NYSE:T - news). Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Japanese media reports said late last year that Microsoft was interested in buying the stake. Other Titus stakeholders include Japan's Toshiba Corp. (6502.T) and Itochu (8001.T).

Microsoft and MediaOne officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

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PC.VGF.Net have posted a preview of Gas Powered Games upcoming game. Here is a snippet of it:

Some of the most innovative and successful games in recent memory have intuitively mixed two genres. Throw a first person shooter and a strategy game into a blender, and out

comes Rainbow Six. What about action and role playing? Try Diablo. Combine adventure and stealth? Looking Glass` Thief is the result. Now imagine the elements of a realtime strategy title and a classic dungeon crawl together seamlessly. Sound appealing? That's what the creator of Total Annihilation had in mind.

In Dungeon Siege, you'll take control of up to 10 different characters and depart on a quest to discover the reason behind the monsters that have been attacking villages in hordes. The game's world is filled with both NPCs that may join you and plenty of creatures to smite. Although the game may take place in a typical fantasy land, Dungeon Siege should, if nothing else, give RPGers one thing they do crave - sheer size. The Siege Engine allows the designers - as well as gamers - to create a world of any imaginable size. As a plus, you can expect the world to be seamless, and have no load times whatsoever; gone are the days of waiting every time you enter a cave or stroll into a tavern.

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The state and federal governments have won the first round of their antitrust case against Microsoft, but with years of legal appeals anticipated, who the new president is could change how the case is resolved.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites) has signaled he would be more friendly to the company. Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) generally has stayed silent. There is precedent for a new administration changing course in a major antitrust case: In 1982, the year-old Reagan Justice Department threw out a case against IBM that had lingered since 1969.

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Microsoft UK today announced that Asheron's Call will officially launch in the UK on the fourteenth day of the fourth month of the year 2000. To celebrate the upcoming launch, Microsoft UK is giving gamers the chance to get their hands on a copy of the game early. 100 copies are up for grabs over the next two weeks leading up to the launch. This promotion is only open to UK residents.

Asheron's Call is a massively multiplayer role-playing game playable exclusively on the MSN Gaming Zone (http://zone.msn.co.uk) that draws together thousands of players within a dynamic, 3-D online world. Players can create truly unique characters by choosing between extensive combinations of visual appearance, attributes and skill sets. Asheron's Call immerses players in an intense role-playing fantasy environment where they must compete or cooperate with thousands of other online players. An extensive system of allegiance and influence greatly enhances social interaction. The online nature of the game facilitates an evolving and dynamic adventure inside a consistent universe. The game will never be solved because there will always be more areas to explore and quests to complete.

For more information about the launch of Asheron's Call in the UK, please visit the game's official UK Web site, at http://www.microsoft.com/uk/games/asherons

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Bill Neukom, executive vice president and chief counsel at Microsoft, yesterday reiterated what's becoming a company mantra: Microsoft will prevail in the appeals process.

Speaking to the Litigation Section of the American Bar Association annual meeting in Seattle, Neukom remained as cool as a cucumber about the company's legal prospects, three days after a federal judge ruled the Redmond software maker broke antitrust law.

"Some of you might have heard some news concerning my company and a tiny part of the government this week," he joked. He then detailed how the company will argue each of the counts U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled on, citing precedents and discussing legal points.

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Intel may boost capital spending this year by as much as 40 percent to $7 billion, as the world's biggest chipmaker looks to raise production to meet demand, analysts said.

Intel, expected to be the industry's top spender this year, has said it will spend $5 billion, up from $3.4 billion last year. The biggest component of capital spending for the chipmaker is manufacturing and testing equipment.

Chip-equipment suppliers have seen surging orders from Intel in recent weeks, analysts said. The chipmaker's lengthy project list includes plans to install equipment for a test line in Oregon and refurbish a New Mexico plant. Intel will convert one plant in Colorado into a test facility and equip another to make flash memory, logic chips and other communications and networking gear.

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3D Rage have released a comparison between Windows 98 and Windows 2000. here is a snippet of the comparison:

Back in the old pre-286 MS-DOS days, a system could only run one program at a time, and that program would frequently take control of all available resources, even if it didn't need them. Even now, an operating system cannot truly multithread without multiple processors, so it is simulated through time slicing. A single processor can only execute one thread (a single process, win32 applications can and usually do have several threads) at a time. Therefore, there must be some system in place to decide which thread gets to use the processor.

You can read more here.

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WinZip have released a new build of their popular compression utility bringing the build number up to 3095. You can download the new build from the WinZip homepage.

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Earlier reports of a potential flaw in Windows 2000 have been debunked. The flaw, which was reported on the Internet last month, concerned servers used as domain controllers and connected to more than 51 IP addresses.

A group of users at a North Carolina ISP reported problems with their domain controller after adding 52 IP addresses to the machine. They reported the problem to Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com), who, after five days of testing, declared the problem to be an "issue," rather than a flaw.

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Gamespot UK has posted up a preview of DirectX 8.0 with a breakdown of the features and benefits that it will give to gamers. Here is a snippet of the preview:

Historically, graphics in DirectX has been divided into two parts: DirectDraw for 2D graphics and Direct3D for taking care of the 3D graphics pipeline. That's about to change. Microsoft's goal for DirectX 8.0 is to merge DirectDraw and Direct3D into a single entity. The focus is to give the best possible support for full-screen 3D game titles. That doesn't mean that 3D in a window goes away. It means that the work that will go into DirectX 8.0 will focus on making full-screen titles run well. Microsoft feels that DirectX 7.0 solved the windowed 3D problem, so 3D in a window is still viable, and it certainly won't disappear.

Microsoft is also working to abstract the API a little more so that more innovative hardware can be developed without having to wait for the API. Rather, innovations can be hidden underneath. For example, the front buffer - which actually contains the displayed image - won't be directly accessible any longer. There will also be a cursor API, which lets hardware vendors finally have a fully supported hardware-accelerated cursor that's supported by DirectX.

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Days after a federal judge declared Microsoft Corp an abusive monopoly, the software giant is giving the world a sneak peek at the latest consumer version of its Windows operating system, which boasts more Internet and multimedia features.

The latest test version of Windows Millennium Edition, also dubbed Windows Me, will be shown off to user groups around the country on Saturday, and shipped to computer makers and sellers next week for testing, Shawn Sanford, group product manager for the consumer Windows division, said in an interview.

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Microsoft last night confirmed that Windows Me has as predicted, hit beta 3 just in time for Microsoft eXtreme. Build 2499.7 (Currently unconfirmed on this at the moment as we were also told my Microsoft that 2499.5 was beta 3 a day or so ago but as soon as we can get a confirmation we'll post it) was the build classed as being good enough for Beta 3 status. Windows Me is the name of the final version of Windows based on the Windows 9* kernel.

Read the Windows Me FAQ

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As expected, Microsoft's upcoming space-sim StarLancer has gone gold and will ship to stores later this month. We will have a review up in the next few weeks once the gold code arrives here. I can already say it is an excellent game if you have been a fan of the Wing Commander series of games.

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The year 2000 is shaping up to be a year of change chez Rothenberg -- and not all of it an unalloyed pleasure. Just weeks after my last embarrassingly remedial activity -- buying my own Mac after years of corporate largesse -- I have taken another consciousness-raising baby step out of my ivory tower: To conform with standard operating procedure in the ZDNet newsroom, I've migrated most of my daylight operations to Windows.

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As mentioned a few weeks ago - Microsoft will debut Windows Me beta 3 (Which went gold yesterday as mentioned earlier in the day) at eXtreme tomorrow. Here is a snippet from news.com:

As previously reported, Microsoft will debut the operating system this weekend at Microsoft Extreme, the company's venue for sneak previews of products. Also being shown is Pocket PC, the company's new version of Windows CE for handheld PCs, and Front Page 2000 Web authoring software.

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While Microsoft prepares for the final stages of it landmark antitrust trial, lawyers are readying the first stages of about 115 civil lawsuits that could expose the software giant to more than $7 billion in damages, legal experts say.

Private attorneys started filing the bulk of civil lawsuits against Microsoft in November, soon after U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his findings of fact in the trial.

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Leave it to La-Z-Boy and Microsoft to find a way to surf with your feet up. The companies during opening day of the International Home Furnishings Market in High Point, N.C., on Thursday unveiled the ``e-cliner,'' a plush recliner with Microsoft's WebTV hard-wired into the armrest.

``I usually fall asleep watching TV in one of these recliners, so now I guess I can surf the Web in my sleep, too,'' said one retail buyer looking over the recliner at La-Z-Boy Inc.'s showroom here. The e-cliner will retail from $999 upholstered to $1,299 for the leather version, complete with the WebTV keyboard console, set-top box and two month's free WebTV service.

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Software giant Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) on Thursday said it had scored a small victory in its legal battle with archrival Sun Microsystems Inc. (NasdaqNM:SUNW - news) over its license for a computer programming technology developed by Sun.

In a ruling issued late on Wednesday, Judge Ronald Whyte of the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., rejected Sun's interpretation of its contract with Microsoft concerning updated versions of its Java technology.

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DVD is becoming a force to be reckoned with, and so are the websites that cover it.

In January, DVDFile.com, along with The Digital Bits and other major DVD sites, launched a campaign to get Star Wars released on DVD. The effort gained so much support that Lucasfilm took notice. While the film company said it would not release Star Wars on DVD, normally tight-lipped director George Lucas agreed to answer 10 questions from the campaign's organizers.

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After a week of being battered on Wall Street and in the courts, Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) is trying to build up its public image with a new television ad.

The software giant unveiled an ad Thursday in which chairman Bill Gates, filmed on the Microsoft campus, talks directly to the camera as he discusses the company's past and future. Upbeat acoustic guitar music plays in the background.

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Consumers are claiming the Internet, demanding rich media content and access to it from anywhere, from the looks of activity at this week's Internet World conference here.

America Online, the king of consumer Internet activity, is in the middle of it all. Yet another example of its consumer-oriented focus is the introduction of a line of Instant AOL Net appliances from Gateway. AOL, of course, also introduced the updated Netscape 6 browser.

"The new [Internet] revolution is about consumers and about convergence," says Steve Case, AOL's chair. The Internet has changed from a hobbyists' haven with little commercial content to a burgeoning online marketplace, he notes. And vendors are trying to make it even easier for you to spend money online.

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Daily Radar is having a Starlancer week on their site and has a breakdown and description of all the ships in the game. When I first read the title on Voodoo Extreme I thought it meant that it went gold, obviously I was wrong. In the Starlancer week they have two sets of music tracks from the game that can be downloaded (Track 1 and Track 2), an interview with Erin Roberts and are going to be revealing a few surprises!

To check out the first page of Ships of the Line click here.

To check out the second page of Ships of the Line click here.

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Matrox have released a new set of drivers for the Millennium G400 card only (not the G400 Max) running under Windows 2000. These are the first Matrox drivers that are fully WHQL certified. The drivers are 2.9 MB and can be downloaded from here. You can also download the uninstall utility (if you don't already have it) from here.

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In a bid to stay one step ahead of market leader Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has started shipping samples of its first copper-based X86 microprocessors as it prepares to report first-quarter sales of more than $1 billion, said the company's chairman and chief executive officer W.J. Sanders III.

Sanders would not reveal the expected clock frequency of AMD's upcoming Athlon processor — code-named Thunderbird — with integrated Level 2 cache and copper interconnects, which it expects to ship by midyear. AMD began shipping its fastest 1-GHz Athlon processors, built with its 0.18-micron process technology and aluminum interconnects, to a limited number of customers last month.

The Thunderbird chip, which is will be produced at the company's Fab 30 in Dresden, Germany, is based on a 0.18-micron, six-layer metal copper manufacturing process. The process was frozen last winter and later qualified at the end of last quarter.

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ATI have released new Windows 2000 Drivers for their ATI Rage 128 chipset. You can download the file from here.

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3Dfx have released new Windows 2000 Drivers for their Voodoo Banshee chipset. At the moment these are beta drivers and are unsupported. These drivers give you Glide and OpenGL support to the driver kit that wasn't included with Windows 2000. You can download the file from here.

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Sun Microsystems, in its efforts to compete with Microsoft Office in the Windows arena, has announced the availability of Star Office 5.2 beta for download. This version focuses on improving Microsoft Office file type support to make it easy to migrate to the Star Office set of business applications, as well as improved support for importing and exporting to and from MS Office. Over 200 other features have been added to this release, and it can be downloaded from FileForum. Testing runs until April 4, 2000. Visit the Star Office site to learn more about it.

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MyInternetDesktop.com, the Internet hotspot for free web-based applications, has added online file storage to its repertoire of services. Offering users 100 MB of virtual hard drive space free of charge, MyInternetDesktop gives users full access to word processing, e-mail, personal calendar, and an array of other applications for business and personal use.

MyInternetDesktop.com separates itself from competition by allowing users to access these services without the need of any downloads or plug-ins, which makes it ideal for mobile appliances and gaming consoles. It does not require an Active-X or Java plug-in, making it truly capable of cross-platform use.

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Monday's proclamation that Microsoft is guilty of a series of antitrust violations presumably sent whoops of joy through the Mac faithful, particularly if the volume of "Apple will rule" postings on the financial bulletin boards is anything to go by.

For now, "Apple will rule" is a very unlikely outcome. To be honest, it's an unlikely outcome no matter what happens next. The real test will come when Judge Jackson passes sentence on the software giant, and this won't happen for at least a couple of months. Much also depends on whether Microsoft gets anywhere with its already announced appeal.

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The Justice Department's top antitrust enforcer said Thursday, one day after Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates visited Capitol Hill, that politics had no place in the enforcement of antitrust laws. On Wednesday, Republican leaders called for an investigation of whether the Justice Department had gone too far in prosecuting Microsoft in a landmark antitrust case, after they met privately with Gates. Justice Department antitrust chief Joel Klein took on Capitol Hill in remarks to the American Bar Association at its annual spring meeting in Washington.

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Microsoft last night confirmed that Windows Me has as predicted, hit beta 3 just in time for Microsoft eXtreme. Build 2499.7 (Currently unconfirmed on this at the moment as we were also told my Microsoft that 2499.5 was beta 3 a day or so ago but as soon as we can get a confirmation we'll post it) was the build classed as being good enough for Beta 3 status. Windows Me is the name of the final version of Windows based on the Windows 9* kernel.

Read the Windows Me FAQ

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I seem to be one of the few people who think it makes more sense to split Microsoft into layers -- an operating systems company and an applications and content company -- than into parallel "Baby Bills" that would make directly competing products.

I offer last year's Melissa virus as an example of the harm that results from the current monolithic structure of the company -- and as evidence that true competition in the market, as well as other direct interests of consumers, are harmed thereby.

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To the chagrin of bosses around the globe, Microsoft Corp. today announced that the MSN™ Gaming Zone (http://www.zone.com/) has an average of more than 100,000 unique users per day accessing its recently launched single-player games. Much of the access to these games is occurring during daytime hours, which suggests that people are playing the five new free* games from work PCs.

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Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein next week will testify before a congressional committee to defend the Justice Department's prosecution of Microsoft, a judiciary committee source said.

The routine hearing, which the House Judiciary Committee had postponed from January, puts Klein and the Justice Department (DOJ) in the hot seat just days after a ruling in the Microsoft trial and a controversial Washington visit by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled largely in favor of the government in the antitrust case brought by the DOJ and 19 states. Jackson found Microsoft to be a dangerous and aggressive monopoly that used anticompetitive means to preserve its Windows franchise.

Gates, who yesterday came to town at the request of the White House, also met with congressional leaders who gave him a warm reception and expressed their outrage about the DOJ's prosecution of the Redmond, Wash.-based software maker.

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The Internet is getting a lot faster

A Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Professional-based entry in a competition sponsored by the Internet2 Community has broken the record for transcontinental Internet traffic. A team that included Microsoft, Qwest Communications International Inc., the University of Washington and the University of Southern California Information Services Institute moved 8.4 gigabytes of data 5,626 kilometers (3,494 miles) in just 82 seconds. That’s a transfer rate of 831 Mbps.

Moving data at that rate would allow a user to download all the music on a single CD (640 megabytes) from one coast of the United States to the other in about six seconds. With current conventional modems, that same transfer would take more than a day.

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America Online Inc. wants to expand its presence over the Internet and into your home.

Company CEO Steve Case rolled out two major announcements in his Internet World keynote here Wednesday morning: the official launch of the long-awaited Version 6.0 of the Netscape browser, powered on the open-source Gecko engine, and a deal with Gateway Inc. (NYSE: GTW) to develop countertop devices that offer "instant access" to a customized version of the AOL (NYSE: AOL) service.

Case, dressed for the occasion in a cow-decorated tie and the Netscape jacket given to him by Jim Barksdale, said the announcements indicate that "Netscape is back."

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How do you run a new economy company with a falling stock price?

Until now, that's been largely an academic question. Internet companies of all stripes have used buoyant stock -- and the prospect of even bigger payoffs -- to recruit employees, make acquisitions, even pay lawyers, landlords and electricians.

Now, wildly gyrating share prices are putting this business model to the test. As the prospect of a stock market in free fall becomes all too real, Internet darlings are finding they have to pay employees more, treat them better, grovel for support services and, most of all, lay out a convincing path toward profitability.

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Sun Microsystems Inc. is considering filing a private antitrust suit against Microsoft as a result of the way Microsoft has mishandled Java, said Sun general counsel Mike Morris on Wednesday.

Sun (Nasdaq: SUNW) is studying Jackson's decision "very carefully" as a result of his claim that Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) behavior toward Sun violated the Sherman Antitrust Act.

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One would think Apple is turning into a software maker, judging by a newly unveiled open-source project. Today at Internet World in Los Angeles, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company released version 1.0 of its Darwin server project to software developers. The year-old collaborative effort between Apple and independent programmers is Apple's attempt to capitalize on the runaway success of the Linux operating system while expanding its influence in multimedia streaming software.

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Saving suffered a blow in a U.S. federal court, which ruled it was a bullying monopoly, Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) is taking its case to the court of public opinion.

The software giant took out full-page advertisements in U.S. newspapers such as the New York Times and USA Today on Wednesday, running a letter from co-founder Bill Gates and Chief Executive Steve Ballmer defending the company and touting its successes.

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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates set aside his differences with the government's antitrust case against him on Wednesday and appeared at a White House ``new economy'' conference that heard some alarm bells about the gyrating stock market.

``We're at the beginning of what the computer can do to change our lives. The best is yet to come,'' Gates told the conference hosted by President Clinton, two days after a federal judge ruled Microsoft broke the law by trying to control the market for Internet browsers.

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Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) today announced that it has uncovered four Kentucky businesses that have allegedly distributed counterfeit and infringing Microsoft® software. Microsoft is taking action to stop these companies from distributing illegal software in order to help prevent unsuspecting consumers, the honest distribution channel and the value of intellectual property from being negatively impacted by software piracy.

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Microsoft Corp. today announced that Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) will lead the adoption of the upcoming Microsoft^® Speech Application Programming Interface (SAPI) 5.0. Under an arrangement that will benefit developers and consumers of speech-enabled solutions, Lernout & Hauspie will work to deliver multilingual automatic speech-recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS) engines for Microsoft SAPI 5.0. The L&H™ ASR1600 automatic speech-recognition engine and the L&H TTS3000 text-to-speech engine, which are used widely by developers for PC and multimedia application development, are planned to be SAPI 5.0-compliant across multiple languages and available through the next release of the Microsoft Speech SDK for development purposes. Developers wishing to commercialize multilingual applications will have the option of obtaining distribution licenses from L&H.

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Microsoft Corp. today announced that Dell Computer Corp. plans to ship in May a PowerApp.web appliance server based on Windows^® 2000 technologies. As part of a collaborative effort, Microsoft and Dell have worked together closely to achieve a reliable, easy-to-use, high-performance fixed-function Web server appliance that is ready to run when it arrives and can be operational in just minutes.

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As exclusively announced yesterday - Microsoft today released a new beta of Internet Explorer 5.5 for public download:

Microsoft is proud to announce the availability of Internet Explorer 5.5 and Internet Tools Beta. This release encompasses a number of enhancements to Internet Explorer, including improved printing and support for Print Preview functionality. There are also several new features for DHTML and content developers to take advantage of, such as: enhancements to DHTML behaviors, improved editing, colored scroll-bars, transparent IFrames and support for vertical text layout. For an overview of these new features, visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/voices/ie55.asp.

Important Information   This is prerelease (beta) software, distributed for feedback and testing purposes. Microsoft does not provide technical support for beta products (see below for information on accessing peer-to-peer newsgroups). This software is for advanced users who regularly test prereleased software. If you are unsure of whether this accurately describes you, Microsoft recommends that you do not download this prerelease software. If you choose to install this prerelease software, Microsoft recommends that you install in a test environment and not in a production environment.

Download Internet Explorer 5.5 Beta

Official Download Information Site

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Senator Slade Gorton, one of Microsoft Corp.'s staunchest supporters in Congress, said Wednesday the software giant would prefer to see its appeal of its antitrust trial go to the circuit court of appeals, rather than directly to the Supreme Court.

Gorton, a Republican from Microsoft's home state of Washington, told reporters after meeting with company chairman Bill Gates that Microsoft had never lost in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. ``And I think that it is safe to say that Microsoft would prefer that it go through the regular process,'' Gorton said.

The trial judge has ruled Microsoft broke U.S. antitrust law and has set out plans to speed the remaining penalty phase of the trial and plans to invite the government to propose any appeal go directly to the high court.

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Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) is considering filing a private antitrust suit against Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) because of Microsoft’s treatment of Java, according to Sun General Counsel Mike Morris. Sun is studying Judge Jackson’s ruling "very carefully" because of Jackson’s decision that Microsoft’s behavior toward Sun violated the Sherman Act. Morris says Sun’s decision when and if to file suit is not dependent on the scheduling of the remedies or other future phases of the current federal antitrust case.

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Bill Gates built Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) into the world's most valuable software company by relying on a ruthless business instinct and hard-nosed bargaining tactics. But in the wake of a federal judge's damning ruling that the software giant was a predatory monopoly -- a ruling with potentially grave consequences -- many are looking around for someone to blame, and their gaze is falling on Gates

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The judge in the Microsoft Corp antitrust trial on Wednesday set May 24 for an expedited hearing on remedies in the case. Earlier this week Federal District Judge Thomas Jackson found that Microsoft violated the nation's antitrust laws by illegally abusing its monopoly power over the operating system for personal computers.

Jackson ordered that the Justice Department and the 19 states which brought the case may file separate briefs if they cannot agree on an approach. ``The plaintiff states shall file any single proposed form of permanent injunction preferred by a majority of the plaintiff states if at variance with the version proposed by the United States,'' Jackson ordered.

Jackson set April 25, or at the latest April 28, for a filing of the proposed remedies by the Justice Department and states. Microsoft is to reply by May 10 and the Justice Department and the states are to reply by May 17.

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How very appropriate that Judge Posner had to declare failure in the Microsoft-DoJ negotiations on Saturday, April 1st, April Fools Day! This truly has been a dance of fools, in spite of the combined IQs of all involved and the millions in taxpayer and consumer funds being expended. In fact, I'd argue that the foolishness of the whole affair is magnified by the intellectual firepower all sides have brought to the table! Has there ever been a case where more intelligence was focused on fixing something that wasn't broken? List all the potential payouts in all the various categories and it makes the entire affair foolish beyond belief.

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Netscape 6, Powered by Cross-Platform/Cross-Device Gecko Browser Engine, to Extend Users' Access of the Web from Traditional PCs to a New Class of Easy-to-Use Web Appliances

Netscape Communications, a subsidiary of America Online, Inc. (NYSE: AOL - news), today announced the worldwide availability of Netscape® 6 Preview Release 1 via free download from Netscape Netcenter. The new Netscape 6 software builds upon the success and popularity of Netscape Navigator and the Company's commitment to improve and innovate its products to bring increasing value and utility to Internet users worldwide.

Download Netscape 6 Preview 1

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The judge in the Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) antitrust case has told both sides he wants to complete the penalties phase of the case in 60 days, and has set up a meeting for 11 a.m. EDT on Wednesday to work out details, according to a court transcript.

``That's the desideratum, to get it resolved in 60 days,'' U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson said in an official court transcript from a closed meeting with all sides in the dispute.

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Microsoft Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Reuters today announced they will co-host the Financial Summit, a one-day conference, demonstration and exposition for Wall Street. Michael Capellas, president and CEO of Compaq, Thomas Glocer, chief executive of Reuters America Inc., and Steve Ballmer, president and CEO of Microsoft, will discuss challenges faced by the financial services industry as consumer and business activity continues its move to the Internet in the new millennium. Industry leaders will discuss the driving forces behind the new technologies that enable global transaction capability, business intelligence analytics, customer relationship management, and transformation of legacy systems to Internet speed.

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Microsoft^® "Baseball 2001" hit store shelves today in time for fans to play on baseball's opening day. With the off-season acquisition of the "Baseball Mogul" code, "Baseball 2001" provides gamers with complete control over a Major League™ ball club, giving fans what they've always wanted.

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We would like to welcome you all to the new and improved ActiveWin mailing list. We have finally sorted out all of the previous problems we had with delivering our list to you all (Our server wouldn't send any more than 200 mailings out). So now you can all look forward to daily e-mails keeping you up to date with everything that is happening in the world of Windows and Microsoft.

We have now begun to work on new content for the daily HTML mailing list you are receiving now...this will include FAQ's and tips of the day. In the mean time we would like to let you all know that from tonight you will get this mailing daily and whenever there is a big breaking news story we will also e-mail you all. We are still working out some problems with bits of text cropping up in our mailings, but we should have those sorted out very soon and as they tend to only appear at the bottom of e-mail mailing there isn't too much to worry about.

Subscribe to the HTML mailing list

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The government could seek restrictions on Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) that take effect this year, long before the landmark antitrust case works its way through higher courts, experts said Tuesday.

District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled Monday that Microsoft committed serious violations of the nation's antitrust laws, opening the way for consideration of penalties in the final phase of the trial that may end in October.

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Microsoft are set to launch the first public beta of Internet Explorer 5.5 in the next few days according to Microsoft. Internet Explorer 5.5 platform preview has been available to developers for the past 2 months and carries on with Microsoft's improvements in CSS 1+2, Dynamic HTML, XML and HTML support.

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An update that was intended to resolve hundreds of bugs in Microsoft's Office 2000 package turns out to have a few glitches of its own. Users who upgrade to Windows 2000 from Windows NT 4.0 and then try to install Office 2000 Service Release 1 will have problems using Internet Explorer, a Microsoft spokesperson says.

Anyone who is experiencing these problems should contact Microsoft customer support. SR-1 Update, a bug fix for the bug fix, should be available in about two weeks, he says. SR-1 was released last week to cure more than 300 bugs discovered in Office 2000.

Note: The Office 2000 SR-1 install problem on Windows 2000 also affects those who have installed Office 2000 over Windows 98 then upgraded to Windows 2000 afterwards.

Download the fix at the Windows 2000 Windows Update site.

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Immediately after the judge's verdict yesterday Microsoft said it would appeal. Said Bill Gates: "While we did everything we could to settle this case, and will continue to look for new opportunities to resolve it, we believe that we have a strong case on appeal." But how strong is it? In his Conclusions of Law Judge Jackson spends some considerable time on Microsoft's case, and does his best to torpedo it.

Microsoft's most recent pitches have been based on its interpretation of the copyright protection it has for Windows. This case is however comprehensively blown out of the water in the judge's Conclusions, and yesterday Gates was instead stressing that "the Appeals Court has already affirmed Microsoft's right to build Internet capabilities into the Windows operating system to benefit consumers."

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The European Commission declined to comment Tuesday on a U.S. federal court ruling finding Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) guilty of violating antitrust laws by mounting a ``deliberate assault'' on competition in the Internet browser market. EU spokesman Michael Tscherny said the EU executive ``does not comment on decisions by other judicial authorities. U.S. authorities are doing their job and we are doing ours.''

He also said it was too early to say if the U.S. ruling would have any impact on EU antitrust investigations of Microsoft, including a study to see if the company's Windows 2000 program gives Microsoft an unfair advantage in e-commerce activities. On Monday, a U.S. federal judge ruled Microsoft built up a monopoly by tying its Internet browser to Windows programs. Microsoft said it will appeal the decision.

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A French anti-racist group dropped proceedings against Microsoft on Tuesday, after the firm said it was fixing a bug to stop a French language spell-checker from replacing ``anti-stress'' with ``anti-Arab.'' The Movement against Racism (MRAP) said Microsoft had apologised publicly and proposed to stop production of the faulty Word 2000 spell-checker until corrections had been made.

Michel Lacombe, President of Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) European and Middle East operations, has said the problem should be fixed in a few weeks and customers would be offered a new version free of charge. MRAP had asked the Paris state prosecutor to prosecute unidentified persons for racist insults.

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Based on a real-time analysis of Net surfers at 650,000 Web sites, April 3, 2000.

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Version 2.2 now supports Kids Passport! Starting late April 2000, children age 12 and under who live in the U.S. need a Kids Passport to use this messenger service. A Kids Passport requires the consent of a parent or guardian to use this service. If you have more than one child age 12 and under, you must give consent for each child's Passport account. For information about Kids Passport and to sign up and give parental consent for your child, go to the Kids Passport Web site.

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The MSDN™ Online Visio^® Developer Center is now available on the World Wide Web. This is the primary resource for anyone interested in Visio as a development platform. The site will provide a variety of resources to developers, including white papers, technical articles, training, customization examples, webcasts, newsgroups and the "Developing Visio Solutions" guide.

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Effective immediately, the Visio^® 2000 product family is available via the Microsoft^® Open and Select licensing programs, and as an add-on to its Enterprise Agreement, making it easier for channel partners to add Visio to any Microsoft license agreement.

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Microsoft Corp. today announced that its re-branded Microsoft^® Visio^® 2000 product line is now available to all customers via its Open and Select licensing programs, as an add-on to its Enterprise Agreement, and from the e-commerce site http://shop.microsoft.com/. Service Release 1 focuses on minor changes that help the product conform more closely to the Microsoft user interface, and on minor improvements to the graphics engine's performance. In addition, the company announced the launch of its Visio Web sites, http://www.microsoft.com/visio/ and the MSDN™ Online Visio Developer Center at http://msdn.microsoft.com/visio/.

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Microsoft Corp (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) Chairman Bill Gates said on Tuesday he did not think a federal judge's ruling that Microsoft violated U.S. antitrust laws, would lead to a break-up of his software company.

Gates made the comment to BBC television's 24-hour news program after District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson on Monday found that the Redmond, Washington-based firm broke the law by abusing its monopoly power in personal computer operating systems, doing ``violence to the competitive process.''

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Wall Street looked set for a positive start on Tuesday, helped by an expected recovery in software giant Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news), London dealers said.

June futures on the S&P 500 index were trading around nine points above their fair value of 1,521.93 by 1033 GMT, suggesting the Dow would open up around 70 points, building upon its 300-point rise the previous day.

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A day after it was stung by a judge's antitrust ruling, shares in software giant Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) were trading slightly higher in pre-market trading on Instinet on Tuesday morning.

The stock was trading at 93, compared with its closing price on Monday at 90-7/8 on Nasdaq.

The company lost 14 percent of its value on Monday ahead of the judge's decision that violated U.S. antitrust laws. The decision was announced after the close of regular trading on Monday.

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Microsoft Corp (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) Chairman Bill Gates said on Tuesday he did not think a U.S. federal judge's antitrust ruling would lead to a break-up of his software company. ``I don't think any kind of extreme remedy such as a breakup is at all consistent with what the court put forward,'' Gates told BBC television's 24-hour news program.

He added the matter was subject to an appeal but said he was confident Microsoft would prevail. ``Common sense stands on our side,'' Gates said.

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Chip giant Intel is ready to release a spate of chipset products in Q2 and Q3 of this year, but sources within the firm have revealed that some of the introductions have already slipped on internal banana skins.

Sources working for Intel Europe showed The Register its desktop product roadmap up until the end of this year, but there are already problems with some of Intel's offerings.

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Let's get on with it -- let's get to the remedies. That seemed to be the near universal reaction in the IT community to Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's guilty verdict in the antitrust trial against Microsoft Corp.

Opinions were more varied, however, on how Microsoft should be punished and what impact that will have on IT's use of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) technologies. News of the ruling caused Michael Sherwood, director of IT at the city of Oceanside, Calif., to halt his organization's deployment of Windows 2000 Monday afternoon.

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Microsoft's MSN dial-up Internet access service will announce a six-month free offer tomorrow in a move to encourage new users to try the software giant's online service. The company will extend the free six-month deal to consumers who sign up for a one-year contract, according to executives. Customers will not begin paying the standard $21.95 monthly fee until the seventh month. The limited offer expires June 30.

"It's an aggressive offer, there's no doubt about that," said Alan Alpert, an industry analyst at Gomez Advisors, an Internet consulting firm. "People always try things for free. The question is: How many users will they retain?"

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It's a dose of double trouble for Netscape mail. Almost half a million Netscape WebMail customers are being forced to change their email usernames as part of an upgrade, and a software bug has shut some people out of their email entirely, the company said today.

Netscape began combining email usernames of Netscape Netcenter, CompuServe and America Online into one database late last week. The move caused overlap in many email usernames, prompting Netscape to notify some customers that they had to change their identities. Since then, message boards and emails have been full of complaints about WebMail, which was initially billed as a service that lets customers carry the same email address for life.

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Microsoft has released a patch that eliminates a security vulnerability in Microsoft(r) Excel. The vulnerability could allow a macro to run without generating the expected security warning.

When an Excel user starts a macro that resides outside of the current spreadsheet (for example, in another spreadsheet), Excel by design will generate a warning dialogue. However, this dialogue is not generated if the macro consists of Excel 4.0 Macro Language (XLM) commands in an external text file.

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Microsoft faces a long and difficult legal fight as it appeals a federal judge's ruling that it broke antitrust laws. But technology and antitrust experts are divided on whether the company will be hindered by uncertainty over its future, or helped by the fact that its final fate will be delayed.

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Excerpts from U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's conclusions of law in the Microsoft antitrust case, issued Monday:

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Microsoft's dramatic plunge Monday shaved more than $80 billion from its market value. In the hours ahead of a federal judge's ruling that Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, ``maintained its monopoly power by anticompetitive means'' and attempted to monopolize the Web browser market, Microsoft stock fell $15.371/2 to $90.871/2 a share.

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Here are a number of the key dates involved in the antitrust investigation of Microsoft from the beginnings of Internet Explorer and onwards.

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Federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson found that Microsoft violated the Sherman antitrust Act, agreeing with the Justice Department on three of the four allegations -- including the most serious.

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Netscape 6, the latest version of the program millions rely on as their primary window to the Internet, will be introduced at a trade show in Los Angeles by officials of America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL - news), which acquired Netscape last year.

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Microsoft Corp said on Monday it would eventually appeal a judge's ruling that said the software giant violated U.S. antitrust law, and voiced confidence that it would ultimately prevail in the case.

``We will seek an expedited appeal of this ruling,'' Microsoft spokesman Tom Pilla said, just minutes after Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson issued his conclusions of law in the case.

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The federal judge presiding over the U.S. government's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp found the software giant violated U.S. antitrust law. The judge's ruling follows the collapse of settlement talks between Microsoft and the government on Saturday. A mediator said the differences were too deep-seated to find a deal at this time.

In regular-session Nasdaq trade, Microsoft shares plunged by $15-3/8 to $90-7/8, knocking $80 billion off the company's value, down to $473 billion, as the market anticipated an adverse ruling. Trading in Microsoft shares where halted minutes before the the announcement by District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson. The following are equity market strategist views on the ruling.

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A federal judge today found that Microsoft Corp violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, legal sources said. U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson found that the company used its position to ``monopolize the web browser market'' to the detriment of competitors, the sources said. The judge found that Microsoft could also be liable under state anticompetition laws, said the sources, who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

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Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) said on Monday it would hold a news briefing at 6:00 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT) to respond to a federal judge's conclusions of law in the U.S. government's antitrust case against it.

The briefing would be given by ``senior Microsoft executives'' at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Wash., it said in a brief notice.

Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson is set to issue his final verdict on the case at 5:00 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT). The ruling, which is widely expected to find Microsoft guilty of violating antitrust law, comes after the breakdown of talks between the company and the Justice Department to settle the case.

Jackson found in a preliminary ruling late last year that Microsoft abused a monopoly in personal computer operating systems to harm rivals and consumers. Microsoft has said it plans to appeal if the final ruling goes against it.

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U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein will hold a news conference on Monday after a judge rules at 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT) on whether Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) violated the nation's antitrust laws, the Justice Department said.

Department officials said Reno and Klein will answer questions about the ruling at 5:30 EDT (2230 GMT).

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U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, 62, former Navy officer and now a weekend sailor with a 33-foot sloop he owns with two others. Lives in Georgetown and sometimes walks the 20 blocks to the courthouse. Republican appointed in 1982 by President Reagan. A fixture in the case against Microsoft since 1995, when he approved the settlement in the first government lawsuit against the company. An important ruling he made against Microsoft in December 1997 was overturned by an appeals court, which said he had overstepped his authority.

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In 1997, when the US Justice Department asked a federal court to slap Microsoft Corp. with a million-dollar-a-day fine for illegal practices, the company's number two executive, Steve Ballmer, replied: ''I say to heck with [US Attorney General] Janet Reno.''

Nearly 21/2 years later, Microsoft is once again gambling that it can win the antitrust suit brought by the Justice Department and 19 states. But Microsoft's bold confidence has been shaken not only by the beatings it has taken so far but also by the rapid changes in the technology world that make it harder for any one company to be as dominant as Microsoft has been.

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If it's true, I've got to commend Microsoft for a very smart move. Preliminary indications are that Windows 98 Millennium Edition will ship with some (most?) of the legacy drivers removed. They will presumably be available, as they have always been, from the manufacturers of the legacy devices involved. The point is, Microsoft has found a way to distance themselves from their flawed past without sullying the reputation of Windows 2000. Instead, they'll deliver a Win98ME as the sacrificial goat to take all the blame for the incompatibilities inherent in moving to a healthy OS model replacing the real-mode kluges of the past.

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The release of Microsoft's BackOffice 2000 server suite has been delayed until the end of the year. Microsoft (stock: MSFT) internal documents state the original target date for the BackOffice upgrade for Windows 2000 was the second quarter. The delay could disappoint early adopters of Windows 2000 who are awaiting the server suite upgrade.

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As the media focuses on a possible Microsoft-DOJ settlement, the sad fact is that, whatever the outcome, the impact on the public will likely be negligible. How do I know? Prices on software are not going to come tumbling down. We are not going to see expanded choices for PC operating systems and office software. Everyone knows that what will come are new classes of devices and software.

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The federal judge overseeing the Microsoft antitrust trial was ready to issue his verdict in the case today, just days after settlement talks between the software company and the government collapsed.

Microsoft officials confirmed today that U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson would issue his ruling after financial markets close.

The judge was expected to rule against Microsoft, based on harsh assessments he outlined last November in his ``findings of fact.'' In that document, Jackson found that Microsoft repeatedly engaged in anti-competitive behavior by taking advantage of its monopoly power. The charges were made in a lawsuit filed against the company by the government and 19 states.

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Microsoft Corp. today announced the release of Microsoft^® WindowsÒ Services for UNIX 2.0 to make it easier for customers to integrate the Windows 2000 operating system into existing UNIX-based network environments. Windows Services for UNIX 2.0 includes components that simplify account management and network administration, as well as allow customers to build on existing technology investments by leveraging UNIX resources and expertise.

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Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to release BackOffice^® Server 2000, the next version of its comprehensive server suite for the Microsoft^® Windows^® 2000 operating system that will reduce the cost and complexity of building, deploying and managing scalable IT solutions for branch offices, departments and medium-size businesses. Microsoft also today introduced a special pricing promotion on Upgrade Advantage (UA) for BackOffice Server and the BackOffice Client Access License (CAL), which allows BackOffice Select and Open License customers to upgrade to Windows 2000 Server immediately and entitles them to future upgrade releases of BackOffice Server components - as well as the server suite itself - for two years from the date of purchase.

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The combination in one package of the Microsoft^® FrontPage^® 2000 Web site creation and management tool and PhotoDraw™ 2000 version 2 business graphics software equips business users with a comprehensive set of tools for easily creating and managing dynamic, professional-looking Web sites at a savings of more than $50, compared to the cost of acquiring the two products separately. The estimated retail price of the package is $199, and it comes with an in-box $50 rebate. Consumers also can enter to win* an Agfa Ephoto Smile digital camera by visiting the Web tour site at http://www.microsoft.com/office/improveimage.htm.

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Microsoft Corp. today announced the retail availability of Microsoft^® Project 2000 and the companion, Web-based Microsoft Project Central, a major upgrade to the world's best-selling, most popular project-management software with over 5 million users. Since mid-November 1999, a record number of more than 500,000 beta CDs of Microsoft Project 2000 have been distributed. According to Todd Warren, general manager of Microsoft Project, "Microsoft Project 2000 and Microsoft Project Central represent the culmination of an extensive customer-driven design process that included input from customers of all sizes. These customers told us that we needed to make the product more usable for entire organizations, allowing everyone from individual contributors to the president of the company to get involved in project management - we have delivered on that."

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With talks dead, Microsoft faces a legal quagmire. But that doesn't necessarily spell trouble for tech. Federal appeals judge Richard Posner's effort to mediate a settlement between Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) and the federal and state trustbusters have failed.

Microsoft will take its lumps this week when federal district judge Thomas Penfield Jackson renders his decision, then take its chances in the appellate division. Its shares are trading 10-12 points lower in Europe, and as it is one of the largest components of every popular index, we are looking for falling markets right out of the gate this morning.

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Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) shares were down nearly 9 percent in pre-opening trade on Monday following the collapse of settlement negotiations in the U.S. government's antitrust suit against the software giant.

Microsoft was at 96-3/4 on the Instinet electronic broker system, down from its Friday close at 106-1/4. The antitrust case now moves back to the Washington court where District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, in findings of fact last November, said Microsoft had abused monopoly power, damaging consumers, competitors and others.

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Software giant Microsoft Corp. said Saturday that it was ``disappointed'' that its talks with the U.S. government to settle an antitrust lawsuit had broken down. The Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft blamed the talks' collapse on the Justice Department, which filed the suit, and accused the government of seeking ``excessive and extreme'' measures against the company.

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Malaysia's Nikko Electronics Bhd is rumoured to be the front-runner for a videogame contract from U.S. software giant Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news), a weekly business magazine said on Sunday. The Edge said Nikko Electronics was expected to manufacture the X-Box, a videogame console that is expected to rival Sony's PlayStation2, for Microsoft.

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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates today said that he and team of top company executives worked for the last four months in an attempt to achieve "a fair and reasonable settlement" of the antitrust case with the Department of Justice and various states.

"We went the extra mile to resolve this case, but the government would not agree to a fair and reasonable settlement that would have resolved this case in the best interests of consumers and the industry," Gates said.

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The judge mediating the Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) antitrust case announced on Saturday that he has ended his efforts to settle the case. ``I regret to announce the end of my efforts to mediate the Microsoft antitrust case,'' U.S. Court of Appeals Chief Judge Richard Posner said in a statement.

He said that ``the quest has proved fruitless,'' adding that the differences between the two sides ``were too deep-seated to be bridged.'' Posner had conducted negotiations for nearly four months in an effort to settle the case. The failure means that the Washington, D.C. judge hearing the case will issue his conclusions of law next week.

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Sometimes e-mail just isn't fast enough, and that's where AIM comes in. This convenient, add-on to your system lets you communicate one-on-one or in a group with family, friends and business associates who also use AOL Instant Messenger. Finding people online can be easy too. Use the new AOL Instant Messenger Member Directory to locate friends by name or by e-mail address.

You can download the beta here.

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BetaNews has received word about a bug in older Windows AOL Instant Messenger clients. By sending others a specific HTML tag in a message, users can crash older AIM clients with a general protection fault. BetaNews tests have confirmed that versions up to and including 3.5.1808 contain the bug. The problem does not occur in newer clients or AIM clones. The problem stems from AIM's ability to convert HTML into the client's text, and crashes when it tries to convert a certain string. To avoid having your client crashed, visit FileForum and download version 3.5.1900.

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I took a sabbatical a few weeks ago, and instead of heading to Hawaii, I built an office from scratch. After puncturing my knuckles wrestling with wiring 12-gauge solid copper in tiny junction boxes, I decided that electricians don't get paid nearly enough. I also concluded that I know very little about construction.

Fortunately, a semiretired master carpenter was revitalizing a house across the street, and his advice was flowing freely. I decided to apprentice myself to him.

That's the way it should be. "Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace" made this perfectly clear. There is always a master and an apprentice. One presumably knows more than the other.

This is why it's so confusing that Microsoft has decided to apprentice itself to America Online, the death pit of the Internet.

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Federal prosecutors have charged a former Intel Corp. employee with stealing trade secrets about the chip maker's upcoming Itanium processor.

Say Lye Ow, 29, was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday and accused of violating the Economic Espionage Act of 1996, which makes the theft of trade secrets a federal crime.

If convicted, Ow faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.

The indictment alleges that in May 1998, shortly after Ow left Intel, he was found to have confidential Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) documents and computer files. At the time Ow, a Malaysian national, was working for Intel competitor Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW)

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Outsourced productivity applications on the Internet are edging somewhat closer to reality, with Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. planning to deliver final versions of their hosted suites in the second half of this year.

What remains to be seen is whether the hosted model makes sense for any but the smallest businesses.

Sun's (Nasdaq: SUNW) StarPortal program, originally announced last August, won't roll out until the fourth quarter.

The Palo Alto, Calif., company launched in January an early-access version of StarPortal through about 50 Internet service providers, ASPs (application service providers), telecommunications companies and enterprise customers.

Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) will make its Office Online program, announced last November, available in the second half of the year, officials from the Redmond, Wash., company said this week.

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Intel Corp. is looking to push its Pentium III chip past the 1GHz mark.

The chip maker is evaluating its options for introducing Pentium III chips running faster than 1GHz in the second half of this year. The new chips, if introduced, would raise performance of mainstream PCs while keeping Intel competitive with rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE: AMD)

The motivation to raise performance comes, in part, because of the available "headroom" on the chip. But analysts said it will also come out of necessity, due to competition with AMD and demand from its PC-maker customers.

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